England Wars

Nigel Hamilton's Mantle of Command, long-listed for the National Book Award, drew on years of archival research and interviews to portray FDR in a tight close-up as he determined Allied strategy in the crucial initial phases of World War II. Commander in Chief reveals the astonishing sequel - suppressed by Winston Churchill in his memoirs - of Roosevelt's battles with Churchill to maintain that strategy.

Over the course of its history, England has engaged in an uncountable number of battles, but none of her military heroes has had a greater military legacy than Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté. Whether traveling to Trafalgar Square or one of the hundreds of pubs named after him, seemingly it becomes easy to believe that no Briton has cast as long a shadow.

England's recent lurch to the right appears to be but one example of the nationalist wave sweeping across the world, yet as acclaimed Irish critic Fintan O'Toole suggests in The Politics of Pain, it is, in reality, a phenomenon rooted in World War II. We must look not to the vagaries of the European Union but, instead, far back to the end of the British empire, if we hope to understand our most fraternal ally - and the royal mess in which the British now find themselves.

Cultural and familial fireworks flare when the headstrong teenage daughter of a wealthy New Yorker falls passionately in love with a young man from New Orleans, and from a very different background indeed. What makes this story sizzle and soar are its time and place - the United States during the Civil War and Victorian England - and a couple of key facts about the protagonists.

If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancpated, tens of thousands of blacks voted with feet, escaping to fight beside the British. Originally designed to break the plantations of the American South, this military strategy instead unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.

"Au bord du gouffre du 20e siècle, quatre icônes mondiales ont incarné de manière exemplaire et jusqu'à aujourd'hui ce que cela signifie de mener une vie véritablement libre". Les années 1933 à 1943 marquent le chapitre le plus noir de la modernité européenne. Face à la catastrophe, quatre femmes philosophes, à l'orée de leur 30 ans, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Ayn Rand et Hannah Arendt, développent leurs idées visionnaires : sur la relation entre l'individu et la société, l'homme et la femme, le sexe et le genre, la liberté et le totalitarisme, Dieu et l'homme.

At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners' cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites - and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation.

When the Italian dictator Mussolini saw that Hitler was conquering Europe, he decided that he too would have a share of the plunder. He declared war on the Allies, vowed to control the Mediterranean, and with his 300,000 troops stationed in Libya, take Egypt and the Suez Canal. But he knew that this could not be accomplished while the strategic island of Malta remained in Allied hands. For the next two years Malta and its people suffered for almost continuous bombardment, but never gave in.

The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton en route for New York on her maiden voyage with 2,228 passengers and crew on board. On 14 April, 1912, at twenty minutes before midnight, sailing at almost full speed, she struck an iceberg and sank in just two and a half hours. Over 1500 lives were lost. This is the story of a great tragedy described by the surviving passengers, officers, and crew who were on board that night. Firsthand accounts help to explain why so few of the passengers took to the lifeboats.

This dramatic account of the War of 1812 fills a surprising gap in the popular literature of the nation's formative years. It is this war, followed closely on the War of Independence, that established the young nation as a permanent power and proved its claim to Manifest Destiny.

1936. Civil war is tearing Spain apart, and the world is on the brink of chaos... Twenty-one-year-old Lucy is frustrated with her constrained life in Hertfordshire, teaching and keeping house for her domineering father. But she is happy to be living next door to Tom and Jamie, two brothers she has known since childhood, and whom she loves equally. But everyone's lives are turned upside down when Tom, the younger, decides to join the Republican cause in the bloody war in Spain.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Celts, then keep reading...while Celtic culture has stayed alive in Ireland, its roots run much deeper, and they extend much farther than the small island nation off the coast of modern-day Great Britain. The story of the Celts is one of a rapid rise to prominence followed by a slow decline due to the influence of the Romans. But even so, Celtic culture has remained strong in Europe and has been able to persist to this day.

Wellington’s Scum: The History and Legacy of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars examines the history of the British Army during one of history’s most pivotal eras. You will learn about the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars like never before.

The popular view of the First World War remains that of Blackadder: incompetent generals sending brave soldiers to their deaths. Alan Clark quoted a German general's remark that the British soldiers were 'lions led by donkeys'. But he made it up. Indeed, many established 'facts' about 1914-18 turn out to be myths woven in the 1960s by young historians on the make. Gordon Corrigan's brilliant, witty history reveals how out of touch we have become with the soldiers of 1914-18. They simply would not recognise the way their generation is depicted on TV or in Pat Barker's novels.

Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-19th century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China in order to continue to supply Chinese addicts with opium. The two wars that followed have become known as the Opium Wars, and they led to the utter defeat of China, the establishment of a British colony in Hong Kong, and the continuation of a narcotics trade that was worth millions of pounds each year to the British.

We speak English today because the Anglo-Saxons took over most of post-Roman Britain. How did that happen? There is little evidence: not much archaeology, and even less written history. There is, however, a huge amount of speculation. King Arthur's Wars brings an entirely new approach to the subject - the answers are out there, in the British countryside, waiting to be found. Months of field work and map study allow us to understand, for the first time, how the Anglo-Saxons conquered England, county by county and decade by decade.

The Pale Horseman is the compelling sequel to the best-selling The Last Kingdom. Uhtred, Northumbrian born, raised a Viking and now married to a Saxon, is already a formidable figure and warrior. But at 20 he is still arrogant, pagan, and headstrong, so not a comfortable ally for the thoughtful, pious Alfred. But these two, with Alfred's family and a few of Uhtred's companions, are apparently all that remains of the Wessex leadership after a disastrous truce.

Discover how Hilter’s forces impacted the people of Great Britain in this edition. If you were to step back in time to London, 1940, despite the fact you’d still be able to pick out the great familiar landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, wonderful green parks and open spaces, you’d also find a city, and for that matter an entire nation, under siege.

Eighty years ago, Britain stood at the brink of defeat. In 1942, a string of military disasters engulfed Britain in rapid succession: the collapse in Malaya, the biggest surrender in British history at Singapore, the passing of three large German warships through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight, the longest ever retreat through Burma to the gates of India, serious losses to Rommel's forces in North Africa, the siege of Malta and the surrender at Tobruk. All of this occurred against the backdrop of catastrophic sinkings in the Atlantic and the Arctic convoys.

A major architect of welfare reform as President of the Board of Trade and as Home Secretary, Winston Churchill also continued to push a radical social agenda while running the Navy. While he was in charge of the Royal Navy between October 1911 and May 1915, not only were there major improvements in pay and conditions for sailors but detailed consideration was also given to the future of the spirit ration; to the punishing and eradicating of homosexual practices; to the spiritual concerns of the fleet; and to the regime of corporal punishment that underpinned naval discipline for boy sailors.